GE2017: Major parties answer your questions

The UK news over the past few weeks has been full of the General Election. The different parties are working hard to sell us their competing views of the future and on Thursday it is decision time.

Given the importance of the decision we all have to make this week, I thought that REED should also play an active part in the debate. So we asked our audience, the millions of jobseekers who visit reed.co.uk, what questions relating to employment issues they would like us to put to the competing political parties.

Over 1,500 questions were submitted. These were then organised by issue and distilled down to the top ten areas of concern. The idea was to ask the same ten questions of the Employment spokesperson for the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties.

I spoke to Debbie Abrahams for Labour, Damien Hinds for the Tories and Susan Kramer for the Liberal Democrats.

The final ten questions represent a comprehensive list covering the most pressing issues affecting today’s labour market. I would like to thank all the individuals who took the time to send in a question and I would also like to thank Debbie, Damien and Susan for the time that they took to answer them.

We hope that the responses to these questions will help people to make an informed choice at the ballot box next Thursday.

You can watch the answers in full below.

1. How will your party secure a Brexit deal that doesn’t damage the economy or lead to jobs being moved overseas once Britain leaves the single market?

2. What will you do to protect jobs from increased automation and robotics in the workplace?

3. How will you make sure that skilled migrants continue to be able to come to the UK and benefit the economy?

4. With a continuing gender pay gap and under-representation of women on boards, what will you do to counter gender discrimination in the workplace?

5. How will you stop low cost foreign workers coming into the UK to compete for roles here, driving down wages?

6. What will you do to reduce the wage gap between top earners and those at the bottom?

7. How would you improve job security and workers’ rights for those in non-typical employment (such as Deliveroo, Uber and those on zero hours contracts)?

8. With the retirement age going up, what help will your party give to over 50s out of work?

9. What are your plans to improve chances for young people to acquire the necessary education, training and skills for a meaningful job in the working world?

10. What will you do to help the disabled and people with mental health issues find and keep work?